Friday, January 4, 2008
Week 4, Thing #2, The Avatar
I teach my students that research is cyclical. I am finding that Library 2.0 is as well. Yes, I finished my avatar oh so many months ago. Or 2 weeks ago, according to the assignment order. But today my kids became enthralled with it. Then they wanted to make their own so they played around with the program. Then they wanted to look at other librarian avatars. (Yes, they are geeks in training.) So we took a tour of the SLL 2.0 blogroll and looked at lots of avatars. And they all look essentially alike. We are all so trim and wrinkle free. Honestly, the avatars do not look anything like us. I have been to our conferences. So I added my most recent school photo to my profile just to counteract the unrepresentative avatars amongst us. Let's show our true faces, warts and all.
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5 comments:
I must respectfully disagree, yes the avatars are all alike, & I do wish there were other free avatar programs,but I think the important point for students is that, in today's online world we do not need to always use our real pictures to represent us. Heck, I have seen photos of trees used as an avatar, I work with 12 year old girls who enjoy the "li'l hottie" look. Those pictures never go away.
Even the image I used for "bibliofan" while it is a photo of me, is not what I look like at school.
I have fun changing my avatar's appearance and backgrounds. She has never stood in a library, and I loved your snake! BTW Yahoo is blocked by my district so my atudents cannot even see my avatar.
A friend of mine used http://www.doppelme.com/ for a different avatar. Her blog is at http://postcoordinatebliss.wordpress.com . She describes her process here-- http://postcoordinatebliss.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/thing-3-creating-an-avatar/
(I'm not sure how to insert links in this comment box) and then updates it here-- http://postcoordinatebliss.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/thing-3-update/
I agree with bibliofan's comment about the issue to discuss with students is about online safety.
AND that is why I use Irma Pince -didn't like the hottie avatars, but like the privacy of not having my own face - nor because I don't want to show the wrinkles or the bad hair day, but because I don't necessarily want the whole world knowing that much about me.
I knew that posting a photo of me would bring up some discussion. No, I wouldn't ever encourage my students to post their own photos. I do enjoy the variety of avatars that abound on the web. For flickr I use a traffic light as my avatar. I played around with doppleme and like that but wish it had more options. I just hate the skinny-centric, sitcom-star look that we all have with the Yahoo avatars. The media is already overly-saturated with that look. And our girls continue to suffer with negative body images.
Well, since we kicked off School Library Learning 2.0 in the Spring, I've been going to the YMCA each day after work and now I'm as slim and trim as my avatar!
My secret YMCA technique is to read page-turner books while on the treadmill at 3.5 speed and at an incline at 9 or 10 -- the incline is the secret to slimming while reading. :)
Enjoy!
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